


Exceedingly Good

by perfectlystill



Category: Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Living Together, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:35:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28137054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlystill/pseuds/perfectlystill
Summary: The first week feels like a sleepover, an extended vacation where they lie in the dark swapping childhood stories and celebrity crushes and favorite football games until their eyelids ache too much with the effort to stay open. Jess always says, “Goodnight,” and Jules always says it back.
Relationships: Jess Bhamra/Jules Paxton
Comments: 38
Kudos: 98
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Exceedingly Good

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluflamingo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluflamingo/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Bluflamingo! I hope you have a wonderful winter/holiday season and enjoy this story. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to write a little bit of fix-it adjacent fic for _Bend It Like Backham_. 
> 
> Title intended to be from "Darshan" by B21.

The plane ride to the States fills Jess with vibrating excitement starting somewhere deep in her chest, and she grips Jules’s hand tight, fingers laced together during takeoff. They pick at the terrible airplane food and scroll through the movie options on the fancy little TVs on the backs of the seats in front of them. 

When the small map shows their disproportionately large plane flying over the United States, that happy excitement begins to make room for a different sort of stomach churning, a nervousness like the first time Jules brought her to practice and Jess felt the need to be good for someone other than herself, the need to be good for herself in a different way than her own daydreams and to prove herself to the boys she mucked around with. 

“Hey,” Jules says, shoving her shoulder against Jess’s. “You wanna stretch your legs?”

“Here?” Jess looks around. The woman next to Jules has headphones in and her nose buried in a romance novel, the cover all ripped bodice, waves crashing against a rock, and a buff man with long hair flowing down to the bulge in his pants. The guy across the aisle is asleep, snoring with mouth parted, drool dried in the corner. A kid kicks the back of the seat in front of him, and the person -- his mother? -- turns around to scold him. 

“Yeah,” Jules says, an amused smile flirting at her mouth. Jess likes that it always feels like they’re both part of the joke. “I don’t want my legs to be stiff when we get there.”

“My parents used to make Pinky and I walk around the plane once an hour whenever we’d go back to India.”

“Exactly. You wouldn’t want to disappoint your parents.” Jules holds out her hand, and Jess takes it, letting herself be hauled up, apologizing to the romance novel reader as they shuffle by her and into the aisle. 

They walk up and down the plane single-file, turning before the first-class curtains and again before the bathroom. Their fingers intertwine during their third pass, holding Jess and Jules together and ostensibly saving them from turning around to make sure nobody gets lost and hurting their necks in the process. They still lean forward and back to whisper about the pre-teen boy with the iPod they can hear playing Spice Girls songs and the woman who smells strongly of cheap perfume. 

Jess’s nerves still rumble around her stomach when they sit down, but they’ve wasted almost twenty minutes, and she feels more okay than not. Jules smiles toothily, taking the preteen boy’s lead and offering Jess one earbud.

Their shared dorm room is cramped. Their dressers and weirdly sized beds take up too much space so Jules lofts hers, allowing them to fit a cheap futon and tiny, staticky television. Their closets would be bursting with clothes if they brought even half of their things. Luckily, they didn’t. 

The first week feels like a sleepover, an extended vacation where they lie in the dark swapping childhood stories and celebrity crushes and favorite football games until their eyelids ache too much with the effort to stay open. Jess always says, “Goodnight,” and Jules always says it back. Then Jess rolls over to stare at the wall, body succumbing to sleep. 

Practice leaves a new constant ache in Jess’s muscles and in muscles she didn’t even know she had before now. One girl gives her the stink eye every time she says football instead of soccer, but most of their teammates fawn over Jess and Jules’s accents, asking them to say things like “boot” and “lift” and “bloody” because they mean different things in the States than they do in Britain. It’s weird, and it’s good, and when Jess gets particularly homesick, it’s comforting to know she can just grab Jules’s hand and instantly feel marginally better.

Jess smooths her hands over the jean skirt, tilting her head. Her scars peak out beneath the hem, and unless she’s in her football kit, she still feels self-conscious, feels eyes staring at her in a way that prickles at the back of her neck, face warming with embarrassment. Tugging at the denim-like material, Jess attempts to elongate the skirt. It’s not very stretchy and doesn’t budge. 

“Jess?” Jules says, knocking on the fitting room door. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah.” She unlocks the door, then tilts left and right, trying to gauge how well the skirt fits. 

“Oh my god, you look _amazing_ ,” Jules says.

“You think?”

“Yeah. You have to get it.”

Jess reaches down, running a finger over the bit of visible scar.

“Your legs look killer,” Jules adds, their eyes connecting in the mirror. 

Something about the sincerity and spark in Jules’s warm brown eyes brings warmth to Jess’s cheeks, different than she’s used to, champagne bubbling in her chest. “Thanks,” she says, sheepish but delighted.

Jess and Joe dabble in AIM messages and one long distance phone call, but he fades from her memory like a bottle with a pinprick leak, mostly gone before she realizes anything is even happening. Without the photo she brought in her suitcase, she wouldn’t be able to remember what he looks like, and she finds she doesn’t miss him, not in the same way she misses her family or her mother’s food or Tony or even her bedroom posters. 

They officially, amicably break up over the Christmas holiday, and a bittersweet feeling settles in Jess’s heart, accompanied by a certainty that makes it easier to handle the sadness welling in Joe’s eyes before he hugs her goodbye. 

He makes her promise to catch up when she comes home over the summer. Jess can tell they both know it’s just as likely not to happen, but right now there’s comfort in the possibility. 

Jules doesn’t say Jess made a mistake or that she deserves better than Joe or anything like that. She asks if Jess is okay, tells her she loves her, and lets Jess fall asleep on her shoulder on the plane to Santa Clara. Jules smells like the fancy shampoo she only uses at home because her mother insists, but she also smells like their shared space, like _Jules_ , and Jess squeezes her hand and says, “You’re my best friend.”

Jess gets the flu in February, and Jules brings her warm soup and damp washcloths. She sits on the edge of Jess’s bed, resting her palm against Jess’s forehead to gauge her temperature. 

“Still a little warm,” she says softly, brushing back some of Jess’s hair. 

“I figured.” Jess smiles small to say _Thank you_ and also _You’re my best friend, but it’s different than it is with Tony, and I think it might be because I also_ like _like you_.

She doesn’t want to risk anything, though, especially with a fever that might be melting her brain, like Pinky always says whenever she so much as sneezes, so Jess keeps the thought hidden in her smile, and Jules smiles back, sincere and soothing, like she might understand the subtext, anyway.

When Jules gets sick, Jess repays the favor, bringing soup and washcloths. She snuggles with Jules underneath Jess’s blankets because Jules doesn’t have the energy to climb up to her own bed and Jess is immune. They listen to music, and Jess reads and goes over plays while Jules naps for most of the day. 

Even with her skin sweaty, face more pale than usual, cheeks flushed with fever and lips chapped, Jules is beautiful. Jess thinks about kissing her, slotting their mouths together and cradling Jules’s cheek against her palm, about falling asleep wrapped up in one another instead of squished together on a bed that’s both too narrow and too long. 

It wasn’t sick brain, and Jess knew that already, but she really knows it now. She knows it in the same way she knew she and Joe were over, the same way she knew she didn’t have romantic feelings for Tony, the same way she knows Beckham is her favorite player and always will be, something clicking into place almost as though it was always meant to be this way; she just needed to turn some small piece a couple degrees.

Jess and Jules stumble home after a hard-won game, leaning on each other unnecessarily. Jules fumbles with the key to their dorm, and Jess squeezes her side, reveling in touching her, the euphoria of making a tough shot, and the jubilation of winning that erases the pass she messed up. 

Jess is a good player and a good teammate, she’s learned, but there’s something in kicking the ball almost blind and Jules being on the receiving end of it, almost like Jess definitely knows where Jules is, almost like Jules knows where Jess is going to pass the ball despite the play going haywire.

It fizzles in Jess’s heart as they enter their room and she closes the door, Jules laughing at the way they’re still hanging off each other, dropping their bags and stumbling over them like they’re participants in a three-legged race.

They toe off their shoes, and Jules is laughing when she falls onto Jess’s bed. She pulls Jess down with her, and Jess’s heartbeat kicks up a notch. “Too tired to get into mine,” Jules explains.

“Now my bed’s gonna be all gross and sweaty.”

“Jess, our sweat has already dried.”

Jess groans, thinking about her poor skin, about how they both probably stink -- away games are like that, sitting on the bus for an hour, stalled in traffic as the coaches debrief the team -- and how she almost doesn’t care. Pushing up on her elbow, she looks down at Jules. “I should shower.”

“Mmhmm,” Jules agrees, eyes fluttering open. 

Her gaze is soft but it slices through Jess, the gravitational pull of it causing her to lean down. She looks from Jules’s mouth to her eyes, and Jules lifts her head as their lips connect. Her mouth is warm and wonderful. It cracks open Jess’s drumming heart only to fill the muscle until it overflows, head going fuzzy, toes tingling, one hand coming up to rest on Jules’s cheek. Her skin is soft, and she’s emanating heat, and Jess likes her so much. 

She likes her more than she’s liked anyone. 

“Oh,” Jess breathes. 

“Yeah,” Jules agrees.

Their smiles spread across their faces, and Jess snuggles into Jules, pressing her nose against Jules’s temple. “I like you,” she says to feel the thrill of it, to hear it out loud.

Jules shifts to press her smile against the corner of Jess’s. “I like you, too.”

Their room becomes easier to manage, curled up in one bed, legs tangled together as they sleep, keeping each other warm during chilly nights when the draft whistles in through their window. The cheap, generic shampoo Jules buys while free from her mother’s prying eyes starts to smell like home, and Jess finds falling in love easy, natural in a way she never thought it would be. 

Jess and Jules still walk up and down the aisle during long flights, fingers interlaced, trading off intermittent, reassuring squeezes and comments about the passengers who complain to the flight attendants about every small uncontrollable thing. 

Jules hums Mendelssohn’s _Wedding March_ in Jess’s ear when they pass a bride and groom still in full wedding gear, a mockery and an affirmation. Jess laughs, spinning Jules around as they turn and head toward their seats. 

Jules stops short halfway there, and Jess runs into her. Jules’s answering laugh is quiet, private, curling around Jess like a favorite sweater -- the gray one Jules is always stealing. Jules risks a pain in her neck to look over her shoulder and say, “I love you.”

Jess leans forward. “I love you, too.”

There’s a tap on Jess’s shoulder, and the bride is there. Her veil hits the floor, tulle filling the width of the aisle. “Excuse me,” she huffs. “It’s my wedding day, and I have to get to the restroom.”

Jess’s eyes go apologetically wide. “Oh, sorry.”

Jess tries to squish herself to one side and let the woman pass before realizing it won’t work, so she and Jules sprint back to their seats, turning to watch the bride struggle to fit her enormous dress in the tiny airplane bathroom, brow furrowed and face red. When the door slides closed behind her, their giggles escape and they hold onto each other.

“It’s her wedding day,” Jules says on the crest of a laugh. 

“She wore her gown in coach,” Jess says. 

“Looks ugly, too.”

“And expensive.”

Jess rests her forehead against Jules’s shoulder, stomach and cheeks aching, happiness pooling in her gut instead of anxiety. They pull themselves together well enough when the bride shuffles back to her seat, train gathered in her arms like a baby. 

It’s absurd, and Jess is overtired from classes and football and trying to adjust her sleep schedule for the summer back home. She and Jules already have a babysitting calendar from Pinky, and her mom wants her to brush up on important life skills, otherwise known as preparing chole kulche, and she’s genuinely looking forward to it.

Life isn’t perfect. Jess has a large mottled bruise on her knee, she lost half of her socks in their dorm’s dryer, and Jules’s parents are forcing Jules to spend a week with them at the beach, but Jess is following her dream, and she’s in love, and life is _good_.

More than good. 

“What?” Jules asks, smile still shining in her eyes. 

“Nothing.” Jess shakes her head. “I just love you a lot.”

Jules paints her smile onto Jess’s mouth.

Yeah, life is way better than good.


End file.
